Protecting the favored hypothesis

There is still plenty of debate over whether man-made global warming is threatening life as we know it. In the minds of many, it is an absolute certainty that we are dooming ourselves. I don’t want so much to talk about that, though. I want to talk about the scientific community, and their worldview.

Apparently, they are not as interested in scientific discovery of important truths, as they are clandestine cover-ups, collusion and group-think. Many have leaped to the conclusion that they were hiding a truth that was different than what they wanted the rest of the world to believe. That may be true, but it may just be that they have become so used to this kind of science-vs-the-world mentality, that they behaved the way they did even though it was not necessary.

What am I talking about? Consider the fact that this thing has been called The Greatest Scandal in Modern Science. That’s a bit of an overstatement, in my view. It was a scandal, to be sure. The revelation of the emails did not reveal the whole global warming idea as a falsified concoction. Not at all. Yet it did reveal something. It revealed a conspiracy to cover up facts – a conspiracy to protect the “favored hypothesis.”

Yet even a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a “unified” view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the “common cause”; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to “hide the decline” of temperature in certain inconvenient data.

Inconvenient data?

Favored hypothesis?

Wow.

Some see this as one incident – one isolated occurrence of inappropriate behavior. But what if this were to be seen as just the latest evidence that something unsavory is being cooked up? What if we were to discover a similar pattern of conspiracy to promote another one of science’s most favored hypotheses? What if we were to discover a similar pattern covering not just a brief moment in time, but a period of time covering several generations of human population? And what if the favored hypothesis being “protected” is the grandaddy of them all? What if we were to see it in the real “greatest scandal in modern science? What if we were to see it in the grand doctrine of Darwinian evolution by natural selection?

The pattern has been there for decades. We have allowed them to pull the wool over our eyes. We have allowed them to tell us that we are not to teach children to think – not when doing so would put their favored hypotheses up to the light of questioning and examination. “Evolution is science!”, we are told, and “Intelligent Design is just religion masquerading as truth!” And we buy it. We buy it because we are ignorant of the unalterable fact that every scientific hypothesis starts with at least one unscientific presumption. And we buy it because we are ignorant of the distinction between religion and faith. It is impossible to live at all without taking some things on faith. We know that to be true. Yet we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by the misdirection that reminds us of the separation of church and state. It’s time to snap out of it.

The favored hypothesis is that life, after having started by some unknown natural means, evolved from one species to another using a mechanism called natural selection. There are two presuppositions built into that sentence. Neither is or ever will be testable, so both are assumptions built not on cold, logical, empirical data, but on faith. Scientists who assume life started naturally, do so not based on observable data, but by faith. They simply do not believe that anything supernatural exists, so only a natural explanation is possible. Likewise, even when examining evidence suggesting that one species has evolved into another, they can only assume that the mechanism at work is natural selection. It’s a nice theory. The evidence fits the hypothesis – reasonably well anyway. But that is not a proof.

What if there were some other explanation? What if the Biblical version of creation really is the explanation of not just all of life, but all of everything? And what if life was actually designed? What if the mechanism at work in getting one species to evolve into another is not natural selection, but the operation of a designed mechanism not yet fully understood – a mechanism that could be observed at work in the natural world? Or what if the Creator actually existed not only in the spiritual (non-material) world, but in the material one as well. What if the mechanism at work is God’s actual creative work, still going on, moment by moment, millions of times every day?

These questions are not really being subjected to any real scientific thought. That’s because, in the greatest scandal in modern science, the favored hypothesis has been covertly guarded and protected for decades.

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11 thoughts on “Protecting the favored hypothesis”

Havok

John: There are two presuppositions built into that sentence. Neither is or ever will be testable, so both are assumptions built not on cold, logical, empirical data, but on faith.

Both abiogenesis and the theory of evolution, the presumptions you seem to object to, are testable, and have been tested. Sure, abiogenesis is still an “hypothesis”, but large parts of it (spontaneous self assembly of organic components, for example) have been subject to experiment.

John: Scientists who assume life started naturally, do so not based on observable data, but by faith.
Not true. They start with that as a working assumption. As there is no good evidence for an “unnatural” start to life, nor is there any way to frame it as a testable hypothesis, it seems a reasonable start.

John: They simply do not believe that anything supernatural exists, so only a natural explanation is possible.
What do you mean by “supernatural”? The concept seems a little fuzzy, with different people having different ideas about it (and those I’ve read seem to be incoherent).

John: Likewise, even when examining evidence suggesting that one species has evolved into another, they can only assume that the mechanism at work is natural selection. It’s a nice theory. The evidence fits the hypothesis – reasonably well anyway. But that is not a proof.
it fits the evidence, is testable, has predictive power, and no competing hypothesis comes close. Wishful thinking doesn’t help when it comes to explaining reality, as much as we might want it to.

John: These questions are not really being subjected to any real scientific thought. That’s because, in the greatest scandal in modern science, the favored hypothesis has been covertly guarded and protected for decades.
Isn’t that what places like the Discovery Institute, and the Insitute for Creation Research should be doing? It seems all they can do is produce badly researched papers trying to point out flaws in theories which contradict their beliefs, rather than carrying out the research which you’re calling for here. Perhaps you should talk to them about doing some positive research for a change? 🙂

John: Scientists who assume life started naturally, do so not based on observable data, but by faith.
Not true. They start with that as a working assumption. As there is no good evidence for an “unnatural” start to life, nor is there any way to frame it as a testable hypothesis, it seems a reasonable start.

That he cannot even see that he has made a groundless faith-based assumption (nothing supernatural exists – God would have to be supernatural – therefore there cannot exist an explanation for anything that does not confine itself to the material world.) He denies it, and is betting his life on the presumption that he has chosen correctly: there is no God. It’s the ultimate game of Russian roulette.

Yet for one to find proof that the supernatural does exist, again we can start in the beginning. In this case, the very beginning. The scientifically objective, observable reality is that the event itself was not a natural event. It must have been supernatural (which I would define as anything that cannot be explained or understood by natural means), because it either did not have a cause (thus defying all known natural laws) or its cause was only explainable by assuming some external force was at work doing the cause-ing.

The fact that the universe appears to have begun is perhaps the most inconvenient of truths for materialists.

The term “supernatural scientific explanation” is an oxymoron. Yet it would be possible to scientifically test an assumption of a non-materialistic, non-natural cause. Physicists have been busy doing it for decades now. If you determine that the big bang did not follow the rules of physics, and you can find no explanation for them having done so, the supernatural eventually emerges as the most likely alternative.

I think I may, to some extent, have missed the point with my question. Perhaps your main thrust is not that there is something wrong with the way science is done (although the title of the post suggests that this is what you mean to be talking about). Rather, you may be saying that there are assumptions in science that mislead scientists into the belief that science disproves god. Fair enough — science probably cannot disprove god, as it cannot disprove the possibility of a purple cow. (But — what if the “god” at issue can be shown, as a logical proposition, to be the equivalent of a “married bachelor?” But I digress.)
But two questions remain:
(1) is there any reasonable way to bring the possibility of god, or of the “supernatural” or “nonmaterialist”, into science? If so, I repeat, how? John, can you give me an example of a physicist who professes to be testing “an assumption of a non-materialistic, non-natural cause?” I believe you cannot; I believe that any working physicist will say they are looking for a natural, material explanation. On the example of the big bang, I would be surprised to hear a physicist argue that it “just happened” and that there is no scientific reason not to look for its [natural] cause.
(2) Even if we concede that science is ultimately based on unproveable assumptions, how does that improve the picture for theism, christian in particular? You say that Havoc is “betting his life on the presumption that he has chosen correctly.” That is only true in the same way that it is true that you are betting your life on the presumption that your computer screen is not about to explode in your face. If you, or Havoc, have no reasonable basis to think that you are in such danger, then it is certainly not unreasonable to proceed as if you are not.
Your analogy to Russian Roulette is — well, absurd. Russian Roulette involves holding an apparently real pistol in your hand, pulling the trigger, and playing the odds that there is no bullet in the chamber. Could it possibly be your position that the existence of a god who rewards and punishes eternally is as objectively real as the existence of that pistol and the power of that bullet to destroy your head?

I’m saying that everyone has, at the base of his or her worldview, an assumption about the existence of God: that He does or does not exist. I’m saying that the contention that one need not have one or the other is bogus. God is either the One by whom, from whom and for whom all things exist, or He is not. You can no more be neutral about that than you can about life and death. Either you believe that you will cease to exist when you die, or you don’t. The assumptions you make about those two fundamental questions colors everything else you think about, do or say.

If we define science as many materialist-atheists do, then the supernatural is precluded a priori. But science was once defined by much broader terms. It once was about any and alll means of discovering the truth. By asking whether the supernatural can be brought into science, you make the assumption that either it can be, or it must be disregarded. But once again, what are we left with once we remove all possible explanations inside science? Can the universe have started by natural means without a starter? Scientists are overwhelmingly in agreement that the universe began. If that’s true, what can we say? I can think of three arguments:

* It just happened. Why do we need a cause? – This would seem to be counter to logic, yet many scientists do just that. This curious kind of attitude is also seen when Darwinists say that evolution by natural selection is THE explanation for the origin of species, and there is no need for it to be logically consistent with the origin of life itself.
* There was a natural cause – Even if this assumption turns out to be true, it would logically have had to be external to that which was being caused. And the cause would have to have been exempt from the laws of physics. But isn’t that just another way of saying it was supernatural?
* There was a supernatural cause – This is the most logical assumption, of course.

I would admit that testing the existence of something supernatural would seem impossible, since we would be trying to do so from within the limits of the physical laws. But does that prove its non-esistence? No. So we see evidence that there are things that cannot be explained by natural laws, implying that there must be a supernatural explanation. But we have no way of testing whether it exists or not.

Or do we? If we eliminate every other possible explanation, what are we left with?

As for physicists who “professes to be testing “an assumption of a non-materialistic, non-natural cause”, I would say that there are none by that tight definition. But John Polkinghorne was a physicist who was also profoundly Christian. I wrote another post about him here .

So I believe we should pursue every available material explanation. But it is silly to say that since we cannot test the existence of the supernatural, we must eliminate a priori all possible outcomes that assume its existence. There are certainly many, many things that can be tested with an underlying assumption that God (the ultimate supernatural being) exists. And since we cannot prove that He does not, why is that less logical than the alternative?

On question (2), I would say that both the “God” and the “no God” assumptions are unprovable. We do have plenty of indicators, though, that point to the validity of Christianity. Many archaelogical discoveries have validated narratives in the Bible. None have shown it to be mythological. The most convincing proof by far, though it Christ himself. That He lived is beyond question. That His life fulfilled so many of the prohpesies in the Old Testament is strong indication that something beyond myth is at work.

The only way for humans, who exist within the confines of time, space and matter to learn anything about their supernatural creator is if He wrote himself into the story. And the fact is that He did just that by coming to us as the God-man, Jesus.

One of the things Jesus taught us, is that belief in Him would be rewarded with the gift of eternal life, and that there is no other way to get it. He is the way.

So should we believe Him? If we beleive that He is the way and the truth and the life (as he said he was), then there are two possibilities: Either he was a liar, and we just cease to exist when we die, or He was telling the truth and our reward for being so trusting is eternal life. So it seems reasonable, given the stakes, to try to find a way to believe.

What if we choose to not believe? The possibility exists that we will learn that we lost out on the most priceless of treasures.

So the Russian roulette analagy does have some flaws. But it’s still apt. If we’re wrong about the consequences, they will become all too real one day. But in another sense, I don’t like it. With the real RR, you have one chance in six or eight of being blown away. With this, though, your odds are one out of two.

I’ll try to spend a few minutes at a time, throughout the day, responding to this point-by-point.

I’m saying that everyone has, at the base of his or her worldview, an assumption about the existence of God: that He does or does not exist. I’m saying that the contention that one need not have one or the other is bogus. God is either the One by whom, from whom and for whom all things exist, or He is not. You can no more be neutral about that than you can about life and death. Either you believe that you will cease to exist when you die, or you don’t. The assumptions you make about those two fundamental questions colors everything else you think about, do or say.

The Cartesian complement of p is ~p, so it makes sense that “god exists or god does not exist;” it is a valid formulation. The Cartesian complement of “I believe god exists” is “I do not believe god exists;” it is not “I believe god does not exist.” If you are not sure whether god exists, then you do not “believe” that god exists and you do not “believe” that god does not exist. The same applies to whether you believe that you will cease to exist when you die.

If we define science as many materialist-atheists do, then the supernatural is precluded a priori. But science was once defined by much broader terms. It once was about any and all means of discovering the truth. By asking whether the supernatural can be brought into science, you make the assumption that either it can be, or it must be disregarded. But once again, what are we left with once we remove all possible explanations inside science?

The very concept of “all possible explanations inside science” strikes me as inherently unscientific. When should a scientist stop looking for explanations?

Can the universe have started by natural means without a starter? * * * … a supernatural cause – This is the most logical assumption, of course.

I’ve condensed this part of your post, and I don’t have much to say about it, other than – even if it all makes sense, I don’t see how it adds up to a reason for a scientist to accept a supernatural cause? BTW, are you saying that it is impossible to learn any facts about the characteristics or method of such a cause?

I would admit that testing the existence of something supernatural would seem impossible, since we would be trying to do so from within the limits of the physical laws. But does that prove its non-existence? No. So we see evidence that there are things that cannot be explained by natural laws, implying that there must be a supernatural explanation. But we have no way of testing whether it exists or not.

Or do we? If we eliminate every other possible explanation, what are we left with?

Again, how do we know that we have eliminated “every other possible explanation?” And, how do we judge between competing supernatural explanations?

As for physicists who “professes to be testing “an assumption of a non-materialistic, non-natural cause”, I would say that there are none by that tight definition. But John Polkinghorne was a physicist who was also profoundly Christian. I wrote another post about him here .

IIRC, I lifted that “tight definition” from your own writing. But in any event, we’re getting nowhere in terms of any alternative hypotheses to compete with the “favored” hypothesis.

I don’t know anything about Polkinghorne. The religious scientists I know personally tend to be Jewish.

So I believe we should pursue every available material explanation. But it is silly to say that since we cannot test the existence of the supernatural, we must eliminate a priori all possible outcomes that assume its existence. There are certainly many, many things that can be tested with an underlying assumption that God (the ultimate supernatural being) exists. And since we cannot prove that He does not, why is that less logical than the alternative?

How would science be affected by “an underlying assumption that God exists?”

On question (2), I would say that both the “God” and the “no God” assumptions are unprovable. We do have plenty of indicators, though, that point to the validity of Christianity. Many archaelogical discoveries have validated narratives in the Bible. None have shown it to be mythological. The most convincing proof by far, though it Christ himself. That He lived is beyond question. That His life fulfilled so many of the prophesies in the Old Testament is strong indication that something beyond myth is at work.

Is “Christianity” sufficiently uniform that we can talk about its validity? Why are there denominations?

I assume that you use “beyond question” to mean “generally accepted as true,” rather than literally unquestionable. The details of his life are certainly subject to debate. To what extent were the authors of the stories about Jesus conversant with the Old Testament? Is it reasonable to skeptical of reports of prophecy fulfillment from people who know about the prophecies?

The only way for humans, who exist within the confines of time, space and matter to learn anything about their supernatural creator is if He wrote himself into the story.

Nice language, but I don’t see any reason why it should be correct.

And the fact is that He did just that by coming to us as the God-man, Jesus.

Did the pre-christian Hebrews know anything about God? What about the pre-Hebrews, or the people of today who have never heard about Jesus?

One of the things Jesus taught us, is that belief in Him would be rewarded with the gift of eternal life, and that there is no other way to get it. He is the way.

So should we believe Him? If we believe that He is the way and the truth and the life (as he said he was), then there are two possibilities: Either he was a liar, and we just cease to exist when we die, or He was telling the truth and our reward for being so trusting is eternal life. So it seems reasonable, given the stakes, to try to find a way to believe.

Here we go again with the excluded middle. Isn’t it possible that some other paradigm of life after death is true?

Is the goodness of “eternal life” beyond dispute?

What if we choose to not believe? The possibility exists that we will learn that we lost out on the most priceless of treasures.

So the Russian roulette analogy does have some flaws. But it’s still apt. If we’re wrong about the consequences, they will become all too real one day. But in another sense, I don’t like it. With the real RR, you have one chance in six or eight of being blown away. With this, though, your odds are one out of two.

Your conception of “odds” is – well, I can’t think of the right adjective, so I’ll just say it’s wrong. Consider this: every day of this week, it will either rain or not rain. Does that mean that the odds of rain are one out of two?

Unlike the existence of god, the possibility of rain is at least roughly calculable.

I remain convinced that the better analogy is the one I suggested. The existence of god, like the existence of a gremlin who is about to blow up your computer screen, is only important if it is true.

So now we arrive at this inevitable point. You do not believe because, well, you choose not to believe. You have the God-given right to make that choice. And you assume that somehow, since you are really a good guy at heart, that if it turns out that there really is a heaven and hell, that you’ll be seen for the good guy that you are, and you won’t have to spend eternity in torment. Good luck with that.

I hope you’re right. I do. But I remain convinced that you are not.

I responded to your questions, because I detected in them a genuine desire for answers. I was wrong. You have your mind made up, and I do not have it in me to convince you otherwise.

So I apologize for my inability to give you satisfactory answers. I wish you well, and I hope someone someday finds a way to open your mind.

I don’t make any such assumption about heaven and hell and being a good guy. It is clear to me that if you are right, I am in big trouble. I’m not worried.

You’re right; I am not looking for answers per se. I’m cross-examining you. If you want to stop, fine.

But just one more thing, since I’m typing. I was thinking this morning about Pascal’s wager and similar arguments. I thought of this: if, as I believe, the probability that theism is true is extremely low, then it is highly likely that this is the only life we have. So, it is the rational choice to make the most of it. Have a great day!

Your very first sentence, and paragraph, are wrong as a matter of logic. You arbitrarily deny the possibility of agnosticism, which, in a nutshell, would hold that even if the existence of god is a binary proposition, belief in the existence of god can very comfortably rest at the position of “undecided.”

Further, you are wrong to assert that belief or nonbelief underlies every other aspect of a person’s life. In fact, I would expect to find very little correlation between belief in god and any meaningful aspect of a person’s life. What do you think is the difference between what I do and what you do?

Agnosticism does exist, but in practical terms, its really just a less convicted form of non-belief. An agnostic is aware of the fact that some people do believe, but sees no reason to make the scary, “all-in” kind of commitment that is required. So while acknowledging the outside possibility that God is real, that Heaven and Hell will be proved real, and that failure to take that leap of faith has some really bad consequences, he continues to live just the way he did before that awareness came to him.

Your second paragraph is interesting. I would say it all depends on what is meant by a “meaningful aspect of a person’s life”. And in that sense, your definition is probably measurably different than mine. Your value system and mine are different. The things I do with my time, my money, and my talent are all influenced heavily by the question “What would be pleasing to God?” I believe that I will one day stand in His presence, and that an account of my life will be reviewed. The response I want to hear from Him is “Well done, good and faithful servant.” So the guy I am in public is the guy I am when nobody is looking, even when I know I could never be found out. God knows, and that effects everything.

I lived most of my life as an agnostic. And if you are convinced that people like me are illogical, flawed, holier-than-thou jerks who look at non-believers as inferior, even while they seem unable to see their own flaws, trust me when I say that I was worse. I was angry at God, and Christ, and the church, and everything religious for a very long time. Every Christian I ever met was a hypocrite. Worse, they sang, and prayed piously on Sunday morning, then drank, cussed like street thugs, slept around, and engaged in each and every one of the seven deadly sins.

What changed for me was that I started to see people who actually took their faith seriously. They saw themselves as flawed, hypocritical, and just as broken as anyone else, but they genuinely wanted redemption. When I saw the change God was able to make in their lives, I found it compellingly attractive. Most importantly, I started looking at what the Bible actually said.

Ghandi once famously said of us, “I like their Christ, I don’t like their Christians very much”. I could not agree more. The biggest enemy of Christianity is Christians, myself included. Have you ever actually read the Gospel accounts of the life of Christ? If not, why not give it a try? Start with the book of John in the new testament. And make sure and get a modern translation, like the New International Version, or the English Standard Version. I believe that you will find it profound, and maybe even life-altering.

John: But science was once defined by much broader terms. It once was about any and alll means of discovering the truth.

And as methods were found to be flawed and inadequate (such as subjective personal experience/revelation) they were dropped, and methods which worked were kept/refined/expanded (such as methodological naturalism/intersubjective empiricism).

John: Scientists are overwhelmingly in agreement that the universe began.

Are they?
The Hawking-Hartle boundary model has no “t=0” for the visible universe.
Various “multiverse” hypothesis posit an eternal “cosmos”.
Unless someone has managed to meld GR and QM, the most we can say is that at Planck time the universe was small, hot and dense. Beyond that our theories break down (note: that doesn’t mean it’s supernatural, as I’ve mentioned in the past)

John: Darwinists say that evolution by natural selection is THE explanation for the origin of species, and there is no need for it to be logically consistent with the origin of life itself.

Darwin’s explanation was simply how the current species came about from previous ones. The full title is “On the origin of species by means of natural selection or The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for survival”.
There is no logical inconsistency. differential reproduction begins as soon as you have self replicators – the RNA world hypothesis would manage it. Abiogenesis takes us from chemical reactions to those self replicators.

John: I would admit that testing the existence of something supernatural would seem impossible, since we would be trying to do so from within the limits of the physical laws. But does that prove its non-esistence? No.

I’d point you towards Russell’s teapot and the invisible pink unicorn at this point. It’s irrational to believe something just because it can’t be disproved, John 🙂

John: So we see evidence that there are things that cannot be explained by natural laws, implying that there must be a supernatural explanation. But we have no way of testing whether it exists or not.

That’s a fallacious argument John. Our current models are unable to explain some things, but that doesn’t mean those things are supernatural, nor that they’re beyond our ability to explain (which they may well be).
To leap from a lack of explanation to a supernatural explanation you’d either need to produce evidence in favour of your supernatural hypothesis (which you seem to agree would be hard or impossible), or to eliminate any possibility of there ever being a “natural” explanation.
And should you prove that there can be no “natural” explanation, how can you possibly distinguish between the (likely) infinite “supernatural” explanations which could be proposed?

John: Or do we? If we eliminate every other possible explanation, what are we left with?

Ignorance, something you often don’t seem all that comfortable with 🙂

John: But it is silly to say that since we cannot test the existence of the supernatural, we must eliminate a priori all possible outcomes that assume its existence.

We can fit almost any hypothesis to any data set by tweaking the hypothesis. This is where Occam’s razor and the principle of parsimony come in, as well as knowledge of history (where natural explanations have consistently pushed out previous supernatural explanations).
I actually don’t agree that we can’t test the supernatural. If it has any impact on reality, then it becomes an empirical question as to whether it did or does occur. Even if we can never discover some underlying “mechanism” to explain it, we would simply be left with some “standing anomaly” – research into the efficacy of prayer are an example of this, as are investigations into faith healing.

John: Many archaelogical discoveries have validated narratives in the Bible. None have shown it to be mythological.
None?
Not the conquest of Canaan, nor the Exodus, nor Adam and Eve, nor the flood? None of those are mythological, and we’ve found evidence which supports them?
Unfortunately for your position, all of the above are unsupported by the evidence. I’d also submit that many/most of the elements of the Gospels bare signs of being mythic/symbolic rather than historic, especially as the majority of Mark seems to be a reinterpretation of existing scripture.

John: And the fact is that He did just that by coming to us as the God-man, Jesus.

Not Romulus or Krishna or Dionysis?

John: With this, though, your odds are one out of two.

Do you know worry you’re getting on God’s bad side by not following Islam?
Or how about ruining your chances of karmic progression due to not following the teachings of Krishna?
Seems the odds you’re citing aren’t quite as accurate as one might hope 🙂